Loved And Lost
by ceridwen-amyed
Summary: "It's better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all." Wee AU vignette in which Toulouse doesn't fall from the ceiling in "Spectacular Spectacular" (from a late night writing session).


**Disclaimer: MR doesn't belong to me. *points as Baz* All his.**

**Author's Note: I wrote this a while ago, and I was bored tonight, sooo… here you go. **

* * *

_I owe you nothing, and you owe nothing to me._

Oh, but what a lie that was! He owed her everything… She had been his muse, his bright spark, his lover, his world. And all that had been shattered by five words.

_I'm staying with the Duke._

_You never loved her, said a practical voice inside his head. __You were in love with the idea of love, and she was the first pretty thing that came along. She satisfied a need. Christian shrugged off the Sitar Player's coat. He slowed down his walk, half-hoping that Satine would change her mind, would turn back and call out his name. He wanted Toulouse, Zidler, someone, anyone to slap him on the back and laugh, tell him that it had all been a practical joke._

But none of that happened. Zidler was talking in that ridiculous melodramatic voice of his. The show must go on.

_You were infatuated with her, continued the practical voice,__ just like all these other lost souls. And she played along with it for a while. It was bound to end like this._

"Lies," murmured Christian out loud, as he approached the exit. He had loved her. There was no denying that. And she had left him. Taken his heart in those beautiful hands and devoured it, spitting it back out and grinding it into the dust.

_Still, piped up Monsieur Practical, __it's better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all._

I don't want to lose her though. I don't know if I can _stand it…_

The doormen let him out, their eyes strangely pitying and doleful looking. Christian glanced at them briefly before heading out into the snow. He shivered, wishing he'd kept the coat on.

"Where now?" he whispered. Back to his apartment? What would he do there – sit around drinking, thinking of her, writing about her? Dwelling on the past… He couldn't bear the thought of that… Watching Satine and the Duke. It had taken him hours to work up the courage to come to the Moulin Rouge tonight: what would it be like to have to walk past it each day, a memoriam to his lost love, his lost youth, his innocence? But the alternative would be to go back to England and face his father's smug smile as his bohemian son came crawling back, crippled by his ideals… That was intolerable too.

As Christian stood, trembling, he heard a soft sound behind him. Someone's footsteps on the snow. He turned and saw Warner, a gun hanging in his right hand. For a moment it was if his brain had simply frozen, turned into an ice sculpture: he simply could not process what the gun should be for. 

And then he realised.

"I'm leaving," began Christian. "I'll leave tonight, I won't ever come back."

Warner shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I have my orders." He raised the gun and took a step closer.

Christian watched numbly. There was no point running, no use fighting. Death was walking towards him now, his footsteps as soft as a cat's. "You don't have to follow orders," he said, knowing that it was no use.

"I do."

"Please," murmured Christian, suddenly feeling incredibly calm. He felt that this was inevitable, that a secret part of him (Mr. Practical probably), had known from that first kiss that this would be the way it, and he, would end. "Let my family know what's happened."

Warner flinched and a strange look of regret passed over his dark eyes. "I'll tell the little man to contact them."

"Thank you," said Christian, and he felt like laughing. Finally! A release… The barrel of the gun pressed against his temple and Christian shivered despite himself. He looked up at the stars peeping through the snow-laden clouds. He was grateful that his last look at this world should be on a night so lovely… He shut his eyes and thought of Satine, her laugh, her voice, her eyes. His siren. His saviour, and his destruction.

_I'm staying with the Duke._

"I'm staying with you," he whispered. "I'll haunt you until your dying day."

"What?" asked Warner, his voice harsh. Christian opened his eyes again, looked at the stars.

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn-"

Warner pulled the trigger.

The gunshot sang through the garden, across the street, even into the theatre itself. It cut through the orchestra, silencing their melodies. Zidler's voice died in his throat and the audience murmured, sat up and looked behind them nervously.

Satine slowly turned, her eyes fixed on the door. The doormen looked at each other and then stepped quietly outside. Her heart was in her mouth. _He might've knocked the gun out of Warner's hand, she thought. __It might've missed him, or-_

She didn't want to continue those thoughts. Her breath came out in ragged sobs as she stepped down from the stage. The audience watched her, wondering if this was yet another twist in the play. Zidler grabbed her hand, but she pulled herself free effortlessly and ran down the aisle, flinging the door open. She just caught a glimpse of the doormen chasing a burly looking man out into the street. She ignored them. There was what looked like a bundle of clothes in a puddle of oil lying someway off. She walked towards it, hoping that it wasn't what her heart told her it was. Falling to her knees, she crawled, barely feeling the cold prickle against her skin.

He looked perfect, like an angel fallen from heaven, or perhaps a sculpture made out of ice and painted with blood. His lips were parted; perhaps he had spoken as he died. His eyes… those chameleon eyes which had been life to her, whose glance could send her into flights of rapture; they were blank. As empty as a deserted house. As Satine watched, a snowflake fell and landed in the centre of his pupil. He did not blink. The melting snow fell out of the corner of his eyes like a tear.

"Christian," she whimpered, "please… please don't be dead." She hated herself as soon as she had said it, hated herself for doing this to him. She should have known he wouldn't give her up: he loved her. It made no difference how she felt; he had _loved her, whatever her feelings. And she had killed him, let him die thinking that she didn't love him… That it had all been some game to her. She hoped, prayed that he'd realised the lie, that he knew how much he meant to her…_

"I tried to save you," she whispered, cupping his cheek in her cold hand, her fingers coiling in his hair, staining with his blood. _I should have just told him, she thought, __told him about the Duke and Zidler and me… It was too late now. He was gone. "I love you Christian," she said, her tears falling onto him, wetting his cheeks and catching on his eyelashes. She kissed his mouth and prayed that this would bring him back, that with her tears she could wipe away all marks on him, the bloodstains, the sins he had committed whilst in Paris. To turn him back into what he had been when she'd first met him and loved him. _

Satine knew enough about consumption to know how it killed you: it consumed the lungs, ate away at them, suffocating the hapless victim. She would not be the hapless victim: she would die on her own terms. She pressed her mouth against his, hard, and held her breath. She felt the spasms of her body as she coughed, her lungs finally giving up.

_Thus with a kiss I die._


End file.
